


Do Not Be Afraid

by BaaingTree



Category: Pet - Akwaeke Emezi
Genre: Angels, Eldritch, Gen, Multiplicity/Plurality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26673922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaaingTree/pseuds/BaaingTree
Summary: The Waterways live a quiet life as a janitor, until one day, something appears in their head saying, "do not be afraid..."
Kudos: 1





	Do Not Be Afraid

The Waterways are divided loosely in three: saltwaters, sweetwaters, and estuaries. Saltwater people for hard times, sweetwater people for good times, and estuaries like Ampersand who go back and forth and keep things flowing smooth.

Before the revolution, in the time of monsters, the saltwater people mostly handled things, but this isn’t a story about monsters. This is about something else.

…

Waterways’ mother is like them, but much smaller. There’s only two of them, Agate and Magma, and it’s Magma who teaches Waterways the importance of cleaning.

“What’s the point?” Clay asks. (Clay is saltwater. It’s always saltwaters at home.) “It’ll all just get dirty and messy again.”

“Entropy,” Ampersand adds helpfully—it’s their newest vocabulary word and she’s proud of it.

“Yes, it’s true,” Magma says. “If you don’t take care and keep taking care of something, it’ll all fall apart.” Their face shifts, their eyes spark: Agate, who says, “Like y’all’s bike, kids.”

The bike belongs to all of Waterways, but Clay is especially attached to it, and he just had to re-oil everything after one of the sweetwaters forgot to take it inside, out of the elements. Ampersand sees the moment it clicks in Clay’s head, before Clay says, “it’s like maintenance.”

“Mm-hmm,” says Magma.

“So… not cleaning up after yourself, it’s like leaving your bike out to rust.”

“Yeah!” Ampersand chimes in. “And then getting mad when it gets worse!”

Not many people can get Clay to smile, but Ampersand can. “Yeah,” he says, “and then buying a whole new bike when you could’ve just taken care the first time around.”

Agate lays a finger down one side of her nose and winks. “You got it.”

Before that, Clay and Ampersand were some of the messiest in Waterways. Now they do a lot of the cleaning together, sweeping, mopping, tidying, putting things back right. Clay even learns to mend and sew, which no one else in Waterways can… thought it takes a lot of patience from Magma first.

“Jeez,” Ampersand remarks as she watches Clay stitch around a hole, left late and made bigger. “It’s easier to do a little bit on the regular than try and do it all at once, huh?”

“Mm-hmm,” Agate says. Her tone is forcibly light. “You ask me, when you have to do it all at once, something’s gone badly wrong—”

The words crack off and her jaws snap shut tight, like Magma doesn’t want her talking anymore. Clay and Ampersand look up, but their mother’s face is unfocused, going through a panoply of almost-expressions they can’t follow, like they’re arguing.

Uneasy, not even realizing he’s doing it, Clay expands, nudging Ampersand back behind him, putting himself between her and their mother. He’s saltwater, she’s estuary; it’s automatic.

She jabs him. “Quit that.”

Guilty, Clay catches himself, contracts. “Sorry.” He goes back to sewing.

Their mother isn’t the one they need to worry about.  
…

When they grow up, Waterways become a school janitor, resisting entropy. There’s no shame in work like that; it’s useful, makes things nice, and it’s something just about everyone in Waterways can do. People at the school know that they talk to themself or seem moody sometimes, but after a while pay them no mind.

There’s a monster in the school. They don’t know who, but they can all feel it. There’s a sense of almost-happening, like the smell in the air before a storm, and even Ampersand can’t clean a mess off the floor without a saltwater guarding, watching, ready. Ampersand can tell it drives them crazy, not knowing who it is. Clay thinks it’s the principal; Echo is positive it’s a teacher; Ghost insists they’re both wrong and that it’s someone else.

They’re wrong and right: it’s all of the above and more. And the monsters don’t go for them; no, when it happens, it’s one of the students, and the Waterways saltwaters are the first ones there. Echo intervenes.

It goes badly. But this isn’t about that.

It’s a long time before Waterways are released to go home. Even though she’s saltwater, Echo is too upset, too wound up and intense, so Ampersand has to cover for her, and she has to have Clay with her because they need estuary skills but saltwater protection and Echo isn’t able. Somehow, they stagger through, but Echo is a coiled spring, pacing like a caged lion.

“Something’s coming,” she keeps saying, even at home. “Something’s out there.”

Ampersand can feel it too, that pre-storm uneasiness, and Clay too, by the way he’s fidgeting. They try to soothe Echo, get her some chamomile tea, but she’s having none of it.

“Where is it?” she snarls. “What’s it waiting for?”

Her adrenaline is pumping so hard that Ampersand drops the coffee mug. She tries to catch it, fumbles, and it bounces off the corner of the counter, coming apart and sending a shard at their face. It’s nothing, but Echo’s wired; she surges forward, shoving Ampersand back out of the way.

“Ow!”

“Echo! Are you okay?”

It’s only a slight cut about their lip, but it’s bleeding a little, and Echo’s gone frozen stiff, wide-eyed and pale, clutching their face.

“Echo?”

So quiet they almost don’t hear: “it’s here.”

And then it is, ripping through their in-world like a supernova, too huge for their mind to hold, all fire and glory. The saltwaters are screaming even as they swarm, trying to protect the others, and Ampersand is vaguely aware of their vessel hitting the floor but can’t notice or care, because she’s screaming too, sobbing, rocking in a tiny ball even as Clay wraps around her. It’s like staring into a solar eclipse, in the days before people knew what they were. It’s like staring into the end of the world, it’s too big, it’s too much—

And then it speaks in a voice like the hiss of rain.

“Do not be afraid,” it says. “We are here to hunt monsters.”  
…

It’s saltwaters only, the next few years. The monsters are well-protected, covering for each other, helping each other. Waterways have only the one body, and they’re just a janitor; it takes time, even for an entity as driven and big as the one in their head now. (It tells them to call it Sunny, and no one says a word. As Clay says to Ampersand, the big burning terror gets to call itself whatever it damn well pleases.)

Sunny doesn’t let them rest. They can not stop. The revolution is happening, whether Waterways like it or not, and they can either keep up or be dragged along behind.

The sweetwaters hardly notice—they’re used to being locked in for years at a time—but it’s been a while since things got so bad that even the estuaries are in full lockdown for years on end. Some of them take a long nap, waiting for the revolution to end. Others busy themselves with the in-world and the sweetwaters.

Ampersand waits. She talks with off-duty saltwaters, keeping tabs, bringing the info back to the others. Clay looks haggard and perennially drained, but Echo has it far worse; she’s bound to Sunny, and she looks like she’s being consumed by her own zeal, burned alive from the inside. There’s a lot they’re not telling Ampersand, she can tell.

As the revolution unfolds, they meet other people with their own creatures like Sunny. Bitter paints them to life; Serenade prints and builds them. None of them are being ridden like Waterways are, but they have their own burdens.

Hard years. But they catch the monsters, and Sunny leaves.

It’s like the sun goes out. Without Sunny’s fervor driving them on, the saltwaters collapse in exhaustion. Their time is over. When the estuaries and sweetwaters wake up, it’s in a city called Lucille, and all the monsters are gone.

The estuaries can’t believe it at first, but they don’t have time to be paranoid; they need to put a life together, fast.

Even with the notes and journals and Ampersand, they have no choice but to turn to other-bodied people in Lucille for help. To their surprise, those people step up. They help Waterways find home when lost, help explain the past few years, help Waterways keep things together and build new routines, new habits without the help of the saltwaters. It’s a relief; Waterways don’t have to hide, or come up with explanations or excuses, suppress their conversations. In Lucille, they just are.

The estuaries run things as best they can, but there aren’t that many of them, so the sweetwaters (who number in the dozens) take over. Mount, who they haven’t seen in almost a decade, opens a bakery with Opalescent and Foxfire. Charity and Mercy help them manage it, and Briar runs the deliveries. They’re happy—since they’ve always been protected and safe, Lucille doesn’t seem strange to them. It seems normal.

Ampersand does the same job she did before, just now in reverse, keeping tabs on the sweetwaters and bringing the info back to the sleeping saltwaters. (Even in sleep, they can hear what she says to them—except maybe Echo, deep under.) Since they can’t talk back, she feels okay expressing her misgivings to them. Lucille is nice, lovely… but she’s estuary and can’t help waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing stays this nice, not truly, right?

But the years pass, and nothing happens. And she gets used to it.

One day, after a few years, Clay wakes up. The first thing he says is, “where’s the monster?”

“There aren’t any,” Ampersand says.

He doesn’t believe her. He gets up, takes the vessel, searches the house. There’s only one lock on the door, and the sweetwaters don’t bother with it half the time. Ditto the bakery. When he goes out, everyone calls, “Hi Waterways!” or “I don’t think we’ve met…” Nobody looks at them funny, or avoids them, there’s food in the cupboard and medicine in the cabinet, their calendar is full of enjoyable things (including the weekly Knit One Plural Two) and Clay just can’t handle it. The more he looks, the more upset he gets.

“Clay, you’re going to pop, sit down,” Ampersand says.

“Not until I find the monster,” he insists.

“Clay, that’s over now. There are no monsters in Lucille.”

“No!” he shouts, and now he’s crying. “It’s never over! There’s always a monster! And if you don’t see it, that just means it’s hiding and harder to find and—and—” He’s starting to hiccup and when he collapses to his knees, Ampersand’s there, holding him like he always held her.

“It’s never over,” he says.

“Entropy?” Ampersand asks.

He pauses, calms a little. “Yeah. Entropy.”

She rocks him like their mother used to, tries to think what she can say that will help, that will get him to stop searching their home, looking for imaginary monsters. She decides on, “then we do maintenance. Okay?”

He looks up.

“Like the bike. Like the cleaning. You do it a little at a time, on the regular, instead of all at once. Because you’re right, nothing stays okay by itself; we have to keep it okay. But we can. We did it before, we’ll do it again. Okay?”

He snuffle-sighs, but his body relaxes under her hands. “Okay,” he says.

And they find a new job to do.


End file.
